Letterform Illustration

The goal of this project was to take an object, and using only the letters in its name, render its likeness through a typographic illustration. I chose a dolphin and a porpoise as my subjects.

Rendering similar subjects through two different words allowed me to examine and refine the minor differences between the designs. For example, ‘porpoise’ is a longer word than ‘dolphin,’ yet the actual animal is smaller, which lead to condensing the letterforms. Additionally, the anatomical structure of a porpoise’s skull is fused to its neck, which led to the near-overlap of the ‘p’ and the ‘o.’ The final design challenge was rendering two similar faces, yet retaining distinct ‘P’ an ‘D’ letterforms.